Creative deception

For Groundhog Day screenwriter Larry Rubin ’79, positive thinking is an important part of the creative process—it’s got to be.“I always assume that everything I do will be wildly successful,” Rubin told the Santa Fe New Mexican in January. “That’s this wonderful lie all writers live with.”

Star lite

When power brokers in the nation’s capital need guidance from the stars—the celestial rather than the Hollywood kind—many turn to Caroline Casey ’83, who describes herself as a “weaver of context.” “In astrological terms, Washington is a Scorpio city,” Casey told the Washingtonian in March, “all about the use and abuse of collective power.”

Bore or boor?

It’s unclear whether A.J. Jacobs ’90 has picked up any IQ points in his quest to become the “smartest man in the world”—a task that involves reading all twenty-four volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—but he has become a fountain of obscure facts. “I don’t know if it makes me more popular or whether it makes people want to wring my neck,” Jacobs, who is writing a book about the experience, told the Chicago Sun-Times in February.

Back to the bayou

In mid-February, Bobby Jindal ‘91, a central figure in shaping Medicare policy in the Bush administration, resigned from his post as an assistant secretary under Health and Human Services chief Tommy Thompson to run for governor in his native Louisiana. Jindal told the New York Times that he and his wife “never made the transition to permanent status” in Washington.

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The Brown Alumni Magazine is published bimonthly, in print since 1900.